Welcome to Kianda

• 1: How does Kianda work?
• 2: What is No-Code Development?
• 3: What is Low-Code Development?
• 4: Security

1 - How does Kianda work?

The Kianda no-code / low-code (NCLC) platform has been created with the ultimate flexibility and agility in mind, allowing simple user interactions to build complex processes.

Kianda has been constructed using an Model, View, Controller (MVC) approach. This approach allows designers to build mobile-responsive applications via rapid User Interface (UI) prototyping. The UI provides an easy way to build an application by clicking, scrolling, and dragging and dropping fields. The layout both provides a way to build the application or process schema, and to capture and monitor data at run-time.

What’s under the ‘hood’?

The MVC approach enables user or system-supplied data captured through fields within forms, to react or trigger defined rules associated with fields, forms or processes, via the rules engine.

The rules-engine is made of:

1. Rule blocks - these are blocks that unlock specific functionality using a toolkit approach
2. Flexible and declarative conditional logic

You can use these two key components - rule blocks and conditional logic - extensively and recursively to build the required orchestration of actions or rules that interact with data to provide the functionality you need in your apps or processes.

The rules engine, combined with conditional logic, enables designers to build ambitious, progressive web applications or end-to-end digital business processes that offer both a great UI and high performance.

In addition to the rules engine, CSS3, HTML5, EmberJS, WebApi and NodeJS are some of the underlying technologies used within the platform.

In summary, the Kianda platform is an ideal interface for rapid prototyping and delivering outcomes quickly.

User tip

You can familiarise yourself with the key components of Kianda by going to the following links:

• Application designer
• Controls
• Rules Engine
• Dashboards system
• Connectors ecosystem

What’s next

If you want to use Kianda for no-code development, then follow these simple steps:

Plan your process

Design and build your process

Publish your process

2 - What is No-Code Development?

No-Code development involves the creation of applications or business processes without the need to code. A no-code platform provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) so that citizen developers or non-IT business professionals can easily create and deploy digital solutions to meet business needs.

Regardless of how the solution is created, the output must meet all the requirements of a modern web application - being accessible through all major browsers and platforms and responsive in design so that it can be used on a variety of devices.

Kianda form Designer provides an intuitive interface where both technical and non-technical users can quickly start building digital processes, forms and apps for use on any type of device.

You don’t need to know how to code to take advantage of Kianda’s key features to create modern web application design. These features include:

1. Multibrowser and multidevice access to a platform which can be used online and offline.
2. Intuitive Designer to create forms at a click, with options to clone and activate several forms together.
3. Wide array of predefined fields to choose from.
4. Responsive form layout.
5. Vast selection of properties and settings to customise your design.
6. Connection to external datasources to create up-to-date, scalable processes such as highly dynamic forms. For example, lists with cascading dropdown options.
7. Ability to allow multimedia capture and image annotation through forms.
8. Rules to make forms reactive and interactive.
9. Anonymous forms so that processes can be shared externally.
10. Dashboards to monitor processes in detail.
11. Options to create custom fields, rules and dashboard widgets

Click on each of these links to find out more.

Multibrowser and multidevice access

Kianda is a Progressive Web Application (PWA) which means it can be used across a range of up-to-date browsers, on any platform - Windows, MacOS or Linux - and on any device. As a PWA, this means you can browse Kianda when not online, increasing engagement and availability.

This is particularly useful when operating in remote areas - for example, performing a maintenance check of a wind turbine or other equipment in the field, and capturing information in draft form for submission later on back at the office.

Intuitive Designer

Kianda form Designer provides an easy way to build forms and process components.

The key components of the form designer are:

1. Left-hand pane is used to add form elements like controls and rules. This pane also houses the Exit Designer Save Preview and Publish buttons.
2. Central form canvas displays the current form you are working on and show the changes you are making in real time.
3. Right-hand pane is used to view and edit process, form and field properties and rules.

Kianda Designer

For more information, go to Designer and view the following video.

How Kianda Designer works

Predefined fields

Kianda comes with 16 predefined field widgets, see Controls for a full list. You can also use Kianda Developer to create custom fields if you have some development experience and none of the predefined field widgets satisfy your specific needs.

The default fields fall into four main categories:

1. Input - Input fields include the most common data fields such as textbox, user picker, date field, table, checkbox, drop-down and number fields.
2. Layout - Layout fields are the fields that serve the purpose of perfecting the layout of your form. They include responsive panels, dialog box, field groups and rich text fields.
3. Action - Action fields are fields that allow user interface actions like buttons, links or even signature components.
4. Custom - Under custom fields, you will find any custom-developed fields developed using Kianda Developer.

For example, layout fields play an important role when building a modern user interface as they allow you to add Richtext and Dialog boxes. You can use these fields together to create a modal dialog, allowing you as the form designer to create an alert for a form user - for example, when requiring user confirmation or making a final decision or check.

Example of fields in action - creating a modal dialog

Responsive form layout

Form fields are made to with a mobile-first approach, giving you design once and deploy everywhere opportunity.

By using the Layout option in the property panel, you will be able to simply define the layout of your fields or panels within a form. Clicking on the Collapse or expand button quickly uncovers the layout mode for desktop and mobile.

This allows you to specify a layout made of 1 to 12 columns and is based on bootstrap, a popular CSS framework that allows you to design web interfaces with a mobile-first approach. You can see this layout in action in this video.

Editing forms

Properties and settings

Kianda form usability is brought to life with the help of the various input fields that are specifically adapted to work in mobile, tablet or desktop modes.

For each type of input field - such as textbox, date picker, numeric input, file upload and table - Kianda offers a flexible array of controls that can be adjusted through properties and settings to work with a myriad of scenarios.

Each field comes with its own range of settings like autofill for textbox and currency format for numeric input.

These are some of the common properties of input fields:

• Title - Each field comes with a title property that is usually displayed on top of the field and can serve as a prompt to a user.
• Required - Using this checkbox makes a field mandatory for form users to fill in.
• Visible - Displays the field in the form if checked.
• Layout - Defines both desktop or mobile layout.

In addition to these common properties, each field also has its own range of settings. For example, a list can have data entered manually, via a form, or from an external data source such as SharePoint or Salesforce and that list can be displayed as a dropdown, radio, multiselect or checkbox list.

Connecting to datasources

By connecting Kianda forms to existing external datasources such as lists in SharePoint, Google Drive or SQL tables, your processes will always stay relevant, up-to-date and perform as your data grows, creating a scalable solution.

There are currently 19 different predefined data connectors that allow you to connect external data sources to Kianda processes, as outlined in this video.

Example connecting to a SharePoint datasource

The example in the video shows how a list field that is connected to SharePoint information can be used in a form, so that as the list grows on SharePoint, the information in the Kianda process will update dynamically.

The list field, in conjunction with datasources, allows you to define an unlimited level cascading dropdown hierarchy very easily.

Cascading dropdown example

Let’s say, for example, that you have SharePoint or Salesforce lists of customers in different countries and different cities. You can then use the list data source conditions options to filter content based on that parent list.

This video shows how cascading lists connected to data sources works in practice.

How to create cascading dropdowns

Multimedia capture

When creating forms, there are options to capture user input in a variety of ways - for example, by clicking on radio buttons, selecting options from dropdown lists, entering text, uploading files, capturing images, videos, QR codes and voice input. This video goes through some of the possiblities you have when building forms with Kianda.

Examples of possibilities with Kianda forms

Rules

Rules are an important component of any process as they can be used to trigger automated actions, requiring minimal user management once created. There are 60 predefined rules in Kianda, covering areas such as workflow applications, communications and file management.

This video goes through an example of a rule that sends an automated email once a Submit button is clicked on a form.

Examples of possibilities with Kianda forms

Anonymous Forms

Anonymous forms are a great way of allowing people outside of your organisation to interact with your processes - for example, simple feedback forms to GDPR data requests that hop between multi divisions before sending back a response to the requester with the level of information held by the organisation.

Even with a simple contact form or feedback form, the process rarely ends when the form is submitted. There is always a process or a series of steps behind each public/anonymous form that might culminate with an actionable result that goes back to the person who started the submission.

Anonymous forms can be embedded in iframes and safely displayed within other web-based applications.

Dashboards

Use Kianda’s predefined widgets to create charts in a dashboard page for your process. There are seven different widgets that allow you to visualise different aspects of your process, allowing you to zone in on key data you want to highlight.

Creating a dashboard

Creating custom fields

The Custom fields section of Kianda, called Developer, provides access to fields that are built for extensibility of Kianda capabilities. It is particularly useful in situations where existing fields or rules will not provide the required functionality.

Custom fields have the purpose of providing a user interface for end-users. If you need to build “an action”, then you should use a custom rule widget.

Custom fields allow developers to build a reusable component that can then be used by process designers in real processes.

Check-out the development section for more details on how to build custom widgets in Kianda.

What’s next

To start your no-code development journey, follow these simple steps:

Plan your process

Design and build your process

Publish your process

3 - What is Low-Code Development?

Low-code development offers software developers a shortcut to create something new and beneficial for their organisation. Rather than having to think about every single line of code, as a developer you can take advantage of Kianda’s Developer section to create your own custom widgets from predefined field, rule and dashboard code.

You can also quickly use Kianda Developer to add webhooks, providing an efficient way to push GET requests to other applications in real-time as the Kianda process runs and avoiding the need to poll for data.

Kianda uses EmberJS to build widgets, and in particular the Handlebars templating library, to power the application’s user interface. See templating basics to get started.

EmberJS templating basics

With Handlebars you can quickly build web applications that are made up of different components. Handlebar templates contain static HTML and dynamic content inside Handlebars expressions, which are summoned with double curly braces: {{ }}

Dynamic content inside a Handlebars expression is rendered with data-binding. This means if you update a property, your usage of that property in a template will be automatically updated to the latest value.

Helpers

Ember gives the ability to write your helpers, to bring a minimum of logic into Ember templating. For example, let’s say you would like the ability to add a few numbers together, without needing to define a computed property everywhere you would like to do so.

Helper example

Conditionals

Statements like if and unless are implemented as built-in helpers. Helpers can be invoked three ways; inline invocation, nested invocation and block invocation. For more details, go to: https://guides.emberjs.com/v2.18.0/templates/conditionals/.

How to get started as a Kianda low-code developer

Kianda Developer is a user-friendly interface that allows you to create custom widgets in a few minutes. A custom widget could be a ‘Field’, ‘Rule’ or ‘Dashboard widget’. This video goes through an example of how to create a custom field widget.

Creating a custom field widget

To create custom widgets:

1. Go to the Side menu > Administration > Developer

2. Click on Add widget.

3. Fill out the Edit widget dialog box - that is Title, Unique Id (which is autofilled from the title), Widget Icon, where you can select from hundreds of icons, Group where you can specify what widget folder you would like the new widget to be added to, and then Widget type. There are 3 options: Field, Rule or Dashboard widget - click on each link for more details.

   

4. Click on OK when complete.

5. Widgets created are visible in the main widget view. From here, you can edit a widget by clicking on the Edit button (Pen icon), delete a widget by clicking on the Bin/Trash button and restore earlier versions of a widget by clicking on the Version restore button .

   Widget view

   

6. Webhooks can be created to send a message to a specific URL by clicking on the Webhooks button. Click the link for more information.

Field widget

When you create a custom field widget, the Widget UI and Widget Code tabs are displayed. These two screenshots show the default code for ‘Widget UI’ and ‘Widget Code’.

The ‘Widget UI’ defines the HTML, handlers, expressions and more.

Field widget UI

The ‘Widget Code’ defines the logic and functions.

Field widget code

Custom field widgets you create will be available for use in Kianda Designer by going to Side menu > Administration > Designer > click on an existing process or Add new to add a new process (then click on a form to edit it), and see the Custom fields added under Controls.

Rule widget

When you create a custom rule widget, the Widget UI and Widget Code tabs are displayed. These two screenshots show the default code for ‘Widget UI’ and ‘Widget Code’. The ‘Widget UI’ defines the HTML, handlers, expressions and values for rules.

Rule widget UI

Rule widget code

The ‘Widget Code’ defines the logic, functions and variable routines.

Dashboard widget

When you create a custom dashboard widget, the Widget UI and Widget Code tabs are displayed. These two screenshots show the default code for ‘Widget UI’ and ‘Widget Code’.

The ‘Widget UI’ defines the widget configuration view, used for editing and the widget runtime view, or view mode.

Dashboard widget UI

Dashboard widget code

Webhooks

To create webhooks:

1. Click on the Webhooks button from the main widget view to add a webhook.

   

2. Use the slider to turn on Enable Created Callback, Enable Updated Callback, Enable Deleted Callback and type in the URL in each case to respond to process instance create, update and deleted events.

   For example, choosing Enable Created Callback will enable a URL callback every time a process instance is updated. This results in a HTTP GET request with parameters instanceID={instanceID}, processName={processName} and eventType=created being issued to the give URL.

   Note: Callback has a timeout of 10 seconds.

3. Click on the Help button for clarification.

4. Click on OK when done.

What’s next

If you want to use Kianda for no-code development, follow these simple steps:

Plan your process

Design and build your process

Publish your process

4 - Security

Kianda is committed to delivering a best-in-class solution to our clients. We place security at the core of our offering.

In terms of security and quality, Kianda’s services and solutions are ISO27001:2013 certified and audited by external parties, so you can be confident that we follow best practice for our clients’ data and information security.

The Kianda Platform is a solution that is SaaS cloud-based, and allows for integration to multiple third-party IT systems or siloed data sources. For example, SharePoint Online Environment and Active Directory, SAP, SQL Server, O365 and Oracle.

Quality Assurance

To ensure Kianda meets the highest quality assurance levels, we employ a number of methodologies, including:

• Kianda is ISO 27001 ISMS certified and audited by an external party every 6 months. Details can be accessed here: https://www.kianda.com/information-security.
• Kianda follows agile methodologies for managing product development and project deliveries. Team members are certified in Agile Project Management and Scrum Framework, ensuring we deliver best practice project documentation and product development cycles.
• Kianda’s Information Security Management System (ISMS) policy is designed to protect Kianda’s information assets as well our clients’ information from all threats (whether internal or external, deliberate or accidental), to provide a security approach that satisfies our clients, and to ensure a solid understanding of security requirements and risk management practices and effective communication of security to all Kianda employees, contractors, partners, clients and third parties.
• Kianda’s Information Security Policy ‘Security in Development and Support Processes’ covers Patch Management Processes, Technical Review of Operating System Changes Restrictions on Changes to Software Packages and Product Development stages.
• Kianda regularly backs-up adequate copies and generations of all software, documentation and business information. Regular testing is carried out to ensure the quality and usability of backed-up resources.

The Kianda Platform fully complies with General Data Protection Requirements (GDPR) and is being continually improved, with an enhancement roadmap in place.

Security and Authentication

The Kianda platform provides Single Sign On (SSO) capability with SharePoint or OneLogin. This allows users to create, view and approve forms by first logging in with their Active Directory (AD) account.

Security is provided by integration with the Clients Active Directory / O365 or other Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) requirements. It can synchronise users and their groups from SharePoint, O365 or AD. The platform provides the ability for external users to integrate with SSO and MFA authentication via guest users in O365.

Kianda can be linked with active directory groups set up by the client to control permissions. The system can synchronize with the existing permissions from AD.

User Management

The Kianda platform allows for different users to have different security privileges, providing for easy administrative management of users and their access rights. Our platform allows the following user levels by default:

• User - can only access what is assigned to them. For example, forms and dashboards
• Administrator - can access (view and edit) all
• Manage partners/customers - can only access what is required to manage customer portals
• Design business process - can only design business forms and workflows
• Manage data sources - can only manage data sources and connections
• Developer - can design new widgets within the platform

The platform allows for the creation of user groups and the ability to assign these user groups to processes or dashboards as needed. Dashboard levels or particular widgets can be configured to only be visible to certain users or groups of users and data source connections can be configured in the same way to ensure the highest access control levels.

Our data classification system has been designed to support access to information based on the need to know, so that information will be protected from unauthorised disclosure, use, modification and deletion.

The Kianda platform ensures that data is never transmitted in clear text or stored in a database or file solution. The platform is hosted in MS Azure with enterprise-grade security. All data generated is encrypted at rest and in transit. Data records are also masked from a GDPR point of view. We employ Microsoft security products to automatically mask and classify personal data - which is scheduled weekly.

Overall, Kianda Technologies follows ISO ISMS policies, GDPR best practices and Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) guidelines for product development. Kianda Technologies will also adhere to Client security standards.

Ease of use

The Kianda Platform offers administrative interfaces that are private and segregated from user interfaces.

Kianda forms, by default, provide edit and reassign functions that are only available to admin users or configurable roles within the system. These quick actions allow admin users to make changes to an existing form record when needed. Any changes made by any user are logged in the Audit History.

In terms of designing new forms or making changes to existing designs, admin users have the ability to preview their changes before publishing within the design interface. Changes only become visible to end-users after the process or form has been published. In addition, live and test environments are provided to enterprise clients, providing the ability to test in the test environment before publishing to live.

For further ease of use, error messages are configurable within the Kianda platform. They can be created freely when forms are being designed to ensure scenarios such as data validation or indicating the next course of action. This gives flexibility to form designers to define error messages as needed.

It is easy to learn how to optimally use the Kianda platform. Kianda training is delivered by technical experts and trainers with a deep understanding of the platform, ensuring that clients’ training experience is optimised. Projects are structured so that clients’ appointed staff are involved during the whole journey of project execution. This facilitates knowledge transfer and an “on-the-job” training approach and includes specific training sessions that are run before and after solution delivery.

Dashboards and reporting

The Kianda platform allows admin users to personalise dashboards based on the unique needs of users or user groups based on hierarchy - for example, only project managers see their forms status and admin users may see the full picture.

Multiple dashboards can be created and customised as required per project, per department or other configurations. Access to the dashboards can be set at a high level for the entire dashboard or certain links, lists or widgets in a dashboard and can be made accessible to certain user groups defined in the system.

Dashboard page

Examples of some of our dashboard features include:

• Number of forms awaiting approval
• Number of completed forms per week/period/quarter
• Split dashboards by type or department
• Columns to cater for “requested by”, “date of request”, “pending approval from”, “approved by”, “rejected by”
• An alerts section to highlight approvals that have been pending past X number of days
• Designing layouts to group certain fields
• Charts, Lists, Links, Tiles and Rich Text are available dashboard widgets

The Kianda platform allows users to report on different forms within a SharePoint site (or other relevant data source), as well as for a particular form library. In addition, the platform allows reporting across multiple form libraries, SharePoint Sites, and SharePoint Site Collections. Our reporting capability goes way beyond reporting from SharePoint data, and allows combining of data from multiple data sources for reporting purposes.

Audit history

Kianda logs and makes available all security-related events within the Audit History of each record to administrative users. Also, system logs can be made available when required.

By default, all the forms and processes created in our platform come with detailed read-only Audit History. Audit logs are created for any modifications made to records automatically and are only available to configured roles to view. Our platform allows for the set-up of an “auditor role”, with read-only access, to allow an auditor to run reports and check audit logs.

Admin users can configure optional record level viewing logs. The recording of audit logs is automatic for any changes in the forms which gives detailed field-level auditing information.

The Kianda Platform integrates with SharePoint which provides IRM (Information Rights Management) features that enable the tagging of certain data or documents not to be printed or emailed and so on.

Support and security updates

Within the Kianda platform, administrative users and general users can report any queries or issues using the support ticket menu option available. Our platform is updated with one major release per year and patch/security releases multiple times during the year (which includes security updates). These are communicated with clients in advance.

We provide multi-levels of data recovery. This includes data version history of records, recycle bin feature and ability to recover from a point in time, backups with a time window of every 10 minutes.

Our platform supports 99% uptime. We provide 99% availability; availability is calculated with the exception of scheduled maintenance.

Our services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, excluding planned downtime. We expect planned downtime to be infrequent but will endeavour to provide customers with advance notice. If our systems fail, we treat this as a critical high priority event with an impact on our business continuity. We will do everything possible to solve the issue as soon as possible. Our web services use highly available services with geo-redundancy enabling a failover to another European region in the event of emergency.

What’s next

If you want to use Kianda for no-code development, follow these simple steps:

Plan your process

Design and build your process

Publish your process